


Found

by lizznotliz



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:21:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25921990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizznotliz/pseuds/lizznotliz
Summary: One morning - an otherwise unremarkable morning that Ayda would not have noted in her journals save for a single pertinent detail - the mistress of the Compass Points Library finds a child sleeping in the Friendship Section.(Garthy grows up with the last Ayda Aguefort.)
Relationships: Ayda Aguefort & Garthy O'Brien
Comments: 10
Kudos: 67





	Found

One morning - an otherwise unremarkable morning that Ayda would not have noted in her journals save for a single pertinent detail - the mistress of the Compass Points Library finds a child sleeping in the Friendship Section. They are distressingly small in an undernourished way that Ayda remembers from her own solitary youth, and when she picks them up, they curl into the warmth of her wings without waking. This is the first child that Ayda has ever seen inside Compass Points - except, of course, for herself, and so that’s what she writes down in her notes after wrapping the small child in a blanket from her quarters and placing them in the Lost & Found crate near the front doors.

_There was a child in the library today._

That was all she wrote, along with the date. 

(Years later, when Garthy is asked, they will name that date as their birthday.)

***

When Ayda wakes the next morning, she is being watched. She sleeps in a deep nest of blankets and pillows in her quarters, and just at the edge of the bowl she can see the messy hair and green forehead of the child she found last night. She also sees their pitch black and gleaming gold eyes, which stare at her unblinking for a moment, then start to disappear as the child hunkers down, clearly wary of her now that she’s conscious.

“You’re awake,” Ayda says, sitting up. Now that it’s impossible for the child to hide behind the nest, they take a single step back but otherwise hold their ground. “I placed you in the Lost & Found last night.”

The child points at Ayda and says, “Found you.”

Ayda cocks her head to the side, and then nods. “Yes, you found me. And I found you. However, the very nature of finding something suggests that it has previously been lost or unknown. Clearly some sort of parent or guardian has lost you.”

The child blinks owlishly, and Ayda finds herself fascinated by the gold glint of their eyes.

“Do you know to whom you belong?” The child doesn’t answer. “Do you have a name?”

“Garthy?” Garthy shrugs a little when they say it, like maybe it’s not the name that was given to them, but it’s the name they gave Ayda so it’s the name she’ll use.

“Garthy. You’re hungry.” It’s an observation, not a question. “I left an orange in the crate for you last night.”

The spiral rind of a perfectly peeled orange is dropped by a grubby hand into Ayda’s nest. “Ah. You found it. Excellent. Let us find more food then.”

“Lost and found,” Garthy says, in a sing-song sort of way, and they follow closely behind Ayda’s talons as she climbs out of her nest and leads them to breakfast. 

***

Despite the diversity of Leviathan’s residents, Ayda can’t remember the last time she saw an orc anywhere near her library, let alone a celestial in the city at all. It’s possible Garthy was a stowaway, or perhaps even lured away from a previous home by someone on a ship that has since docked, but their origins ultimately don’t matter. 

No one comes looking for Garthy. Ayda’s the one who found them. So Garthy stays with Ayda. After a week, Ayda moves the blanket-filled Lost & Found crate into her quarters, and starts calling it Garthy’s bed. 

Ayda does not know anything about childcare, but she knows how to do research and she knows what kind of care she would have liked to have had as a child. She contacts a pirate who has procured hard-to-find tomes for her in the past and pays handsomely for some childcare books to add to the Compass Points collection, and she observes Garthy at every waking moment. She learns that Garthy doesn’t like to be swaddled up the way she does when she’s feeling overwhelmed, but they do like hugs, frequently, throughout the day; they scurry through the shelves and climb the sliding ladders and anytime they run past Ayda, they squeeze her quickly around the waist and then dash off again. She learns the importance of well-balanced meals, but always gives them more than they ask for because she knows what it feels like to be hungry all the time. She reads more than she ever has about emotional intelligence and communication and it’s important and fascinating and confusing and frustrating, but Garthy, small and sharp, seems to appreciate the lengths she goes to. 

And as much as Ayda learns from and about Garthy, Garthy learns from Ayda. Garthy learns how to read, slow and halting at first because their textbooks are ancient arcane texts. Garthy learns to be straightforward and blunt, not shy at all about expressing themself or asking for what they need. _I’m not a girl. I want another snack. This book is very good._ And, maybe most important of all, they watch and ask and learn how to carve out a piece of Leviathan that is wholly their own.

“How did you build the library?” They ask, late one night. Ayda is sure there is going to be a meteor shower tonight, so Garthy has been permitted to stay awake. They’re not wild about having a bedtime, especially in a place where things are always happening and young Garthy is afraid they’re missing something fun, but Ayda is firm: _sleep is important for growth_ , she says, citing both a book and the fact that Garthy is gangly and growing like a weed. Staying up for this late-night astronomical event is a rare treat. 

They are hanging upside down by their knees from the perch Ayda recently hung from the ceiling as she fiddles with the settings on her telescope. “I didn’t build the library,” Ayda says, voice slightly muffled. “Or, rather, this version of me did not. The Ayda two lifetimes ago was the first to found the Compass Points Library.”

“But how?”

“She had books and she needed a place for them. Her notes indicate that she had many other goods that she traded for space here on Leviathan, and even leveraged enough materials for the second level by teaching some residents to read and write.”

“Literacy is essential,” Garthy says, echoing Ayda every day of their life.

“It is. Not only to one’s personal growth and the preservation of knowledge, but also to secure a safe, dry, sturdy structure in the middle of a dirty, floating pirate city.”

“So she built it and now it’s yours.”

“Yes.”

Garthy stretches their hands down towards the floor, wiggling their fingers. “I’m going to build a place that’s mine when I’m bigger.”

“What kind of place?”

“I want a place where everyone is happy.”

“Books make me happy.” Ayda considers an unpleasant thought. “Do books not make you happy, Garthy?”

Garthy curls upward, reaching to pull themself up onto the perch and straddling it. They look up through the hole in the ceiling around the telescope at the bright, glowing moon. “Sometimes they do,” Garthy says, shrugging. “But not the same way they make you happy. And books don’t make everybody happy. I want a happy place for everybody, with lots of colors and food and soft fabric and music.”

Ayda thinks this place sounds very overwhelming, but Garthy looks excited by the prospect. It is at this moment that Ayda learns an important parental lesson: sometimes you tell a little white lie to make your child feel better. “That sounds wonderful,” she says, and Garthy giggles in delight.

(Later, when Ayda says she is leaving Leviathan to accompany some Solesian children on a school trip, Garthy will smile and say “That sounds wonderful,” and another aspect of Garthy’s life will come full circle.)

***

Garthy is seven when they outgrow the Lost & Found crate and Ayda strings up a hammock for them in their quarters. Garthy is ten when they pick their last name: O’Brien, after the author of their favorite book. Garthy is thirteen when they accept that being part celestial does not guarantee they will be able to fly, though they break their ankle twice jumping from Ayda’s perch.

And Garthy is fourteen when they cast magic for the first time. It’s messy and loud and destroys Ada’s favorite chair, and both of them are scared about the unknown volatility of Garthy’s magic until, of course, Ayda finds notes from a previous life about an encounter with a sorcerer and how their magic manifested. 

It takes time and effort and trial and error, but after a while, Garthy’s magic is less loud and more soothing, less messy and more sensual. They make the lights dim and the music swell, and Ayda starts to understand more about Garthy and what they want from life.

Comfort. Warmth. Stability. Pleasure. 

Ayda wishes she had the ability to give Garthy more of those things. She’s tried, and if asked Garthy would say _yes, of course you have, mum, of course_ , and Ayda trusts what Garthy says because Garthy knows how much Ayda values honesty, but still. She is a parent. She’s read enough childcare books to understand that you always want to give your children more than you are able.

Garthy is seventeen when they move out of the Compass Points Library, securing a small, cramped little apartment for themself in Mast Hearth. Ayda finds it an uncomfortable space, and strongly dislikes the fact that Garthy is not constantly nearby, but Garthy hugs them fiercely and promises to _keep coming by, yeah, you’re not getting rid of me that easy_. 

And they do, keep coming by, because Garthy is honest and Garthy loves their mother, and Ayda loves seeing them living their life, working hard, and constantly seeking that comfort and warmth and stability and pleasure that’s always just out of reach. They’re going to build that place one day, the one where everyone can be happy. It feels strangely like an inevitability, even though Ayda’s divination powers have not shown her proof. It’s a conundrum that vexes but does not upset her. Ayda is proud. Not of herself, but of Garthy. It is a good feeling. 

In the journal she keeps for her future self, she writes: _You are capable of great love, and the love you receive in return is impossible to measure. I have tried, many, many times. Perhaps you will find a way to quantify it. I believe it is okay that we cannot, though. The love is still there._

***

Ayda is consumed in flames and Garthy doesn’t know how to breathe.

They knew, intellectually, that this would happen one day. Ayda has always been forthright about her heritage and the nature of her cyclical life; Garthy remembers being small and sitting on her lap while she read them passages from the journals of her two previous lives. Garthy has always known that one day Ayda would die and, like her own phoenix mother, erupt in fire to be born again.

Garthy just always assumed they would be… older.

Garthy is twenty-three, and the shape of their mother in the flames writhes and falls and the flames grow higher and the shape disappears.

(Ayda, learning how to sew to mend their clothes. Ayda, writing letters to sorcerers to help them control their magic. Ayda, carrying them to the healer when they fell from the stacks. Ayda, sentimentally keeping the Lost & Found crate that had once been their bed behind the circulation desk until they moved out, and then offering it to them to pack their belongings in. Ayda, handing them an orange this morning for breakfast before abruptly explaining what was about to happen.)

Fire crackles at Garthy’s feet, the pop and hiss of flames, and they watch silently as it starts to die down. What was once a towering flame taller than Garthy shrinks to waist-height, then knee, then just smoking embers in a pile of ash. Enough ash to account for the remains of a humanoid, Garthy would guess, and just for a moment they hate that Ayda made them read all of those anatomy texts once upon a time.

Garthy closes their eyes, breathing deep in through their nose and out through their mouth. The air reeks of smoke and something sour that Garthy doesn’t want to guess at, and they just keep breathing, eyes burning (tears? smoke? does it matter?), and wait for the next part.

_It’s a relatively quick process_ , Ayda had said. Garthy had been holding her hand so, so tight. _It is, as far as I can remember, painless._

For her, maybe. Not for Garthy.

A cry splits the air, plaintive and wailing, and Garthy kneels down in the soot, heedless of their clothes, and starts sifting through the pile of ash. A few glowing embers singe their pants, their hands, but the cries get louder and there she is: a tiny, squalling infant with dark skin and downy wings the color of Garthy’s favorite fruit. When the baby sees Garthy, she reaches up with small, grasping hands and wails again. 

Garthy scoops up the child into their arms. They dust black soot from her fiery hair, not much more than a wisp right now, and whisper soothingly, “You’re alright, lovey. It’s okay. I found you.”


End file.
